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ManusAI Joins Meta

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Re: ManusAI Joins Meta

#161

Post by psadri »

serf wrote: post #80
mercurialsolo wrote: post #46

I had tried manus and never could find a use-case for them that worked for me 1. Insanely overpriced versus over deep research products 2. Deep research has increasingly become a feature in most other products 3. They shot themselves in the foot by sharing very limited usage credits, in the initial wave of DR products pretty much everything was free - ChatGPT, Claude, Pplx, Deepseek. they rolled this back later and a…

It was more of a timing thing, they offered 'deep research' like behaviors a long time before they were offered to standard customers of the primary ai providers.

They launched March 2025. It’s great that’s considered a long time ago.

Re: ManusAI Joins Meta

#162

Post by arnley »

shon wrote: post #76

Manus has been the best agent for turning text into work --useable slides, code, extracting data from websites, etc. that I've seen. There are better tools for specific cases like coding, but for one tool that could handle agentic workflows with minimal oversight and configuration, it's the best. Hope Meta doesn't hose it.

Greatest products with such an impact on people should not be behind closed doors. And delegating complex tasks to AI is clearly what's next.

That's one of the reasons I'm building out in the open:

- https://github.com/codename-co/devs - https://devs.new/

It's not ready for orchestration yet, but most fundamental layers are already working great.

Create your agents using the LLMs of your choosing, directly from your smartphone of you want full privacy, and with no ads, no paywall, no sign up required.

Manus was ahead of its time. But the directions are parting ways.

Re: ManusAI Joins Meta

#163

Post by csomar »

RyanShook wrote: post #71
chenzhekl wrote: post #63

This acquisition is a complete joke in China. From the very beginning, the company focused almost entirely on marketing. Then, after a few months, it fled China and relocated to Singapore. Now that it’s been acquired by Meta, you could say it has finally fulfilled its mission.

Definitely feels like a Claude wrapped with a lot of marketing. But you’d think there must be something more if Meta acquired them… Ok, I guess we’re in a bubble.

I mean given they went on a crazy AI hiring spree and then desmantling the whole thing just a few weeks later... I'll actually need prove that there is anything in there.

Re: ManusAI Joins Meta

#164

Post by MangoCoffee »

"I left Meta because I made a bet that models were going to commoditized and the value would be in products on top of models, but MetaMate and GenAI were highly politicized sucking up all oxygen in the room."

- Erik Meijer

https://x.com/headinthebox/status/2005873104317497426?s=20

I found Erik's takes on this is interesting.

Re: ManusAI Joins Meta

#166

Post by StrangeSound »

noobermin wrote: post #154
rokhayakebe wrote: post #147

Sometimes I feel people are just jealous. If Meta is so ready to throw money why don't these people just build something and sell it to them for billions in 6 months. Join the winning side instead of complaining.

So I have a position that I don't think you'll like. I feel like making money is a means to a better life. Generally, we as a society should seek value creation that actually improves society and increases our productivity. If all you want to do is basically trick rich people out of their money, I don't think that is the world I want to live in. Yes this is an argument from morality fundamentally. I guess I want to l…

Where's the trick here?

Re: ManusAI Joins Meta

#167

Post by qweiopqweiop »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #164

"I left Meta because I made a bet that models were going to commoditized and the value would be in products on top of models, but MetaMate and GenAI were highly politicized sucking up all oxygen in the room." - Erik Meijer https://x.com/headinthebox/status/2005873104317497426?s=20 I found Erik's takes on this is interesting.

You missed the ending - "As always, I was right.". Anyone saying this needs to take a long look at themselves.

Re: ManusAI Joins Meta

#168

Post by basch »

aylmao wrote: post #159
sixtyj wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manus and Kortix seem to be rare in the way how you interact with them. It looks like that every "chat" is running its own Linux box. And instead of chat, you can define the results form - table, markdown text, pdf etc. I have tried it and Manus seems to deliver more organised results. Should be the value of transaction so high? Idk. But I remember WhatsApp situation… feels the same.

I think both aquisitions have little to do with the product, and make a lot of sense when you look at the numbers and broader strategy. WhatsApp had a very clear value at the time of aquisition. It had 450 million users, growth of over 1 million users a day, and was in direct competition with one of Facebook's main products (Messenger) [1]. They did pay $4 billion cash + $15 billion in shares, which is a lot, but ove…

If two $1B companies 'merge' and the surviving entity gives the acquired entity $1B in shares, it didnt 'cost' the acquiring entity anything.

Facebook's stock was up 20% later in the year after the acquisition.

Facebook was worth $134.2-139.2B end of 2013 and $217.5-218.5B end of 2014.

I would say it is misleading to say it cost them $15B in shares if the remaining shares FB kept ended up more valuable after the transaction.

Re: ManusAI Joins Meta

#169

Post by elAhmo »

dinniwang wrote: post #89
kylecazar wrote: post #11

From their Wikipedia, because I had no idea who they were: "Following Manus's launch in March 2025, Butterfly Effect raised $75 million in a funding round led by Benchmark at a valuation of approximately $500 million in April 2025." Half a billion a month after launch and acquisition before the end of the same year. Wild times.

There's a saying "follow the money". In this case you just need to follow the people involved in this company and the ones who negotiated this deal from Meta side and you will get the answer why it was acquired and why its valued so high. Financial engineering and social networking at its best.

Could you elaborate on this?

Re: ManusAI Joins Meta

#170

Post by bostik »

neilv wrote: post #126
kylecazar wrote: post #11

From their Wikipedia, because I had no idea who they were: "Following Manus's launch in March 2025, Butterfly Effect raised $75 million in a funding round led by Benchmark at a valuation of approximately $500 million in April 2025." Half a billion a month after launch and acquisition before the end of the same year. Wild times.

Yet the new AI startups I'm seeing are only offering terrible deals to early hires who could improve their chances of a nice exit. In this crazy environment -- in which money is flying around over AI much like the dotcom boom, but startup founders are using the last-decade playbook of not sharing the wealth with early hires -- I'm starting to think that smart AI job-seekers need to either: * get hired by a company th…

You've stumbled upon the same trade Matt Levine has been pointing out for a few months now.

If you're good at AI, you could get hired at a top-tier company for 1-2M annual comp, and expect to stay there for at most five (5) years. That's a maximum of 10M pre-tax, and you'd be still on the receiving end of employment gauntlet.

Alternatively you could spin up an AI startup, and get acquired for 75M+ in less than 2 years.

In less surprising news, Matt has pointed out a number of deals that look quite a bit like that throughout 2025.

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